


Fragments of Forever

by therune



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: F/M, Gen, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therune/pseuds/therune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rogues and tattoos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragments of Forever

The Rogues were men - capable, determined, competent men. They were supervillains, criminals and - according to some people - worse than alien invasions and zombies.  
They had quite a reputation.  
Once, they had all been young, so young. And of course they had been impulsive, irresponsible, reckless and incredibly foolish.

Roscoe was a bit of a snob, so of course something as vulgar as a tattoo would never mar his body. He´d never enter a tattoo parlor and he´d never let someone disgrace his skin with ink and poor drawing skills.  
Then, he fell in love and the name "Lisa" was written on the skin of his upper left arm.  
Roscoe died, but he never quite got the hang of staying dead. He returned many times and soon after his resurrections, a man would enter a tattoo parlor and ask for a simple, elegant tattoo that said "Lisa".

He´d always been a rebel, always been a troublemaker. Not like his perfect brother - the older one, the smart one, the one with an MIT scholarship, the one who looked up at the stars and saw equations and endless applications.  
He looked at the stars and saw storm clouds. He had never been good with numbers, formulas and equations; he preferred literature, the elegance and power of poetry, the secrets concealed in words and between the lines. That wasn´t quite good enough for his parents. They ignored him in favor of Clyde, who would one day be somebody who was rich and successful. He was a lost cause to them. And so, he started acting out and slowly began his descent from a little boy to a man to whom the weather bowed.  
He wore a leather jacket and drove through town on an old motor bike. He got his ear pierced, he drank and smoked - and of course he got himself a tattoo. It had been so awesome, until he had picked up the wand and became the Weather Wizard. The tattoo was still great, it represented his wild youth, his rebellion and now it even seemed a little prophetic.  
He still couldn´t help but be embarrassed by it. It was hard to be taken seriously as an enemy of the Flash if you had his insignia on your hip - even if you had it first.

"Of course I have one, you gotta be a man to pull off a tattoo," Digger said casually as he stepped out of the shop window of a tattoo parlor opposite the city bank with Sam. He got himself ready, boomerangs in hand. Sam fiddled with his gun for the hundredth time.  
"Is it a koala?" Sam asked chuckling, "A wallaby? Platypus? The shape of Australia? A boomerang? Ten boomerangs? Beer can?"  
Digger grinned and gave Sam a friendly (friendly for him, anyway) punch in the arm.  
Later in the day, after a successful heist, Digger stripped down for a shower. He stared at his mirror image and the red heart on his upper arm that said "Mom".

Lisa couldn´t remember much of her mom. She had been there, like a figure in the background, and then one day she had been gone.  
Her face was a pink smudge to Lisa, her voice a distant murmur and her perfume the slightest hint of cherry.  
The one thing she did remember was a silver necklace her mom wore every day, the first thing that came to her mind when she thought of her mother. The pendant was etched into her memory.  
One day she felt nostalgic, sad and lonely. She drank enough to pretend that she was brave and went to a tattoo parlor. On the nape of her neck, concealed by her hair, there was a tiny snowflake.

Mick had been at a fair, remembering his time as a fire-breather. Then he had proceeded to get drunk to forget how his time as a fire breather had ended.  
There had been a girl with red hair and a smoky laugh...  
He had woken up with the mother of all hangovers and the name "Adena" tattooed on his breast.

Evan´s tale was similar. The demons of his past had reared their heads, yelling and snapping at him until he ran away into the sweet embrace of the one who would never leave him. Cocaine.  
He was in a frenzy, his brain firing neurons, thoughts distorted, delirious - he didn´t know which tattoo artist had worked with him in the state he had been in, but when his thoughts cleared, he had a tattoo. A blue caterpillar sat on his thigh.  
"We´re all mad here," Evan said to himself.

Piper was a rebel, wild and passionate. He was on his greatest rush after his first successful heist. This moment should last forever, he thought. Time was fleeting though, so he decided to immortalize it.  
It hurt like hell, but a green band of notes wound itself around his ankle like ivy.  
The melody was what he had played during the heist. The other Rogues never noticed (mainly because they all hated the band anyway) but Piper sometimes teared up when he listened to ABBA.

He entered his house. It was strange. After all he had seen, all he had witnessed, all he had done - nothing had changed. His friends were still dead, he still was a sort-of reformed criminal, and his house was still the same. Just his luck, to pull off the biggest con in history, to save the world and have no one know he did anything at all.  
No one but him would ever know what really happened in Hell that day, no one would remember.  
And wasn´t that a downright shame?  
For a full day he pondered what to do - write his autobiography, slip an article in the newspaper, do a television broadcast - but none of his ideas were any good.  
None but him would know... no one would care...  
And then he remembered another thing...a thing no one except him seemed to care about...five friends gone because of Neron.  
He abandoned his plans of presenting his heroics to the world. No one needed to know that a criminal saved the world. No one needed to know that on one day the fate of the world had been in his hands.  
He instead needed to remember, to honor his friends.  
He dug through the boxes in his attic, filled with memorabilia from his days at the circus, of his adventures with Danny, of his reformed days and finally of his days with the Rogues. He browsed through photo albums until he had found what he had been looking for. A rare group photo with all of them, thanks to a remote controlled camera.  
Hood pulled back, cowl abandoned, goggles around their necks, but arms around each other, smiles on their faces and James just knew that this was perfect. They were all together.  
The next day he walked out of a tattoo parlor, the words "Once a Rogue, always a Rogue" on his shoulderblades, hidden by his orange sweater. Maybe he´d visit Piper today, to catch up...and to boast, of course.

Rogues didn´t do "I´m sorry". They didn´t do regret.  
Except, of course, when it concerned themselves. Sam pitied himself. He felt sorry for himself. And he regretted the last day with every fiber of his being. A tiny tiny voice in his head called conscience had warned him, but he had ignored it as usual. Of course, he knew that drinking with the guys rarely ended well. The usual consequences were a hangover, memory loss and waking up in strange places. (One time Sam had come to his senses in a bathtub that stood on a playground.)  
That day, he had woken up in his own bed with a hangover and pain.  
His butt - ouch.  
What the hell had happened?  
Groaning, he stood up, limped over to the mirror and looked at his reflection.  
Wow, he really looked like shit.  
And it hurt!  
He stripped off his boxers and discovered a pad of white gauze on his butt.  
Had he been hurt? Had he been to the hospital?  
He couldn´t remember anything after the poker game, except for booze, more booze and a wide, wide grin. And...dancing.  
He faintly recalled dancing on a table...and then someone had shouted something, but he couldn´t - ouch!  
Gingerly he peeled the gauze away. A bright green dollar sign sat on his butt.  
He groaned.  
Now he remembered.  
"Shake your money maker!"

Len had been tempted to get a tattoo many times.  
Tattoos made memories real, kept them alive and he desperately yearned for that.  
He had wanted to get a tattoo when Mom left - to remember her face, her voice, her smell....  
He had wanted one after his first robbery, after he had created the cold gun, after he became Captain Cold, after he had teamed up with the Trickster and met a man from another world, after he he had become a Rogue...and he had never gotten one.  
After he had lost Lisa...lost Roscoe, Sam, the Flash, had lost and regained his own life....and had never gotten one.  
Because...tattoos were supposed to mean something. They were supposed to be special. Unique.  
After his granddad had died, Len felt numb, so cold and numb. He wanted to remember his grandddad, to cling onto his memory...so he had gotten himself a tattoo.  
The tattoo artist had looked at him funny - Len had been far too young.  
But he had money (stolen from his dad´s wallet) and that silenced people.  
Three proud letters graced his left shoulder.  
JLS - Joseph Leonard Snart.

"Dude, why don´t you get a skull or something? You look like a pirate anyway, a skull would be cool!"  
Owen tried to shut Axel out, but the new Trickster´s apparent superpower - the uncanny ability to be mega-annoying - proved superior. Owen surrendered and put down the magazine he had been rifling through. Axel played with his playstation/gameboy/something and chewed noisily on bubblegum.  
"Or a crossbones thing...you could get a skull with boomerangs as crossbones! Like, y´know, Captain Boomerang! The scourge of the six seas!"  
"Seven seas," Mark corrected absent-mindedly, not even bothering to glance up from his book, floating on an indoor-storm cloud.  
"Whatever, man. Or you could get one of those bitchin´ pistols, or the pirate swords."  
"Cutlass."  
"Shut it, wiz! I´m not talking to you - I´m just giving Boomer Junior some advices-"  
"Advice, singular."  
"Fuck off!"  
Owen hid his grin behind the magazine.  
What no one needed to know was that he already had a tattoo.  
At first glance it was just some random tribal design on his calf, but at closer inspection, it was a stylized heart with the word "Mom" inside.

His costume was awesome. And it had style, something that the old Trickster had lacked even before he became a sellout and a traitor. No leggings and bullshit, no cape, no fucking fairy booties - he was the Trickster now. The one and only.  
Clad in yellow and blue, music blasting from his headphones, airwalkers that sparked and were cool.  
And his gloves. His gloves were cool, alright. Big, blue and covered in "Yo"s. The gloves didn´t just look awesome, they were practical. Gloves meant no fingerprints and no ID. They offered extra protection from the elements in the sky...and from stray gadgets. And they concealed his hands.  
Above the knuckles of each finger, a single letter had been tattooed onto his skin.  
Since "Trickster" only had 9 letters, his right pinky displayed something else. A Roman numeral. "II".

A tattoo is permanent. It is literally under your skin.  
A tattoo is forever.

Art is life to Roy. The only time he feels alive is when he is painting. Sure, the flying on rainbows, the robberies and the thrill, his powers make him feel good, but he is only ever truly alive when he is painting. The stroke of the brush over a blank canvas, the unique mix of the colors on his palette, the act of creation – it makes him feel alive. He controls every breath he takes, he chooses where to put the brush, he is the ultimate master of his life.  
He sees so much beauty in the world, so much passion, love and energy. When all this comes together, joined in one fleeting moment – that is when he has to paint. He wants to capture those moments, to immortalize them, to share the sheer perfection with the world.  
But paintings can be robbed, can be destroyed, they can fade, can be erased by nature or human hands.  
He needs more. Art needs more.  
It needs eternity.  
He knews that eventually he himself will fade. That not even the ink underneath his skin will last forever. But it lasts longer.  
His back is a canvas to the tattoo artist, it is being filled with daffodils and sunflowers, with smiling girls, a butterfly, a shooting star, a beautiful rose and the perfect rainbow.  
He literally is art.


End file.
